The Cages
by lwrightstone
Summary: Everyone knew that Jeb Batchler was a pleasant man. So, when police follow reports of gunshots to his house, the last thing they expect is caged in his basement...


**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

**A/N: I know that I'm supposed to be working on my other stories, but, for the record, they probably won't ever get finished. This is just a one shot though, for now.**

"Mobilizing unit three", I spoke into my communications device at the scene of the crime. There had been a report of gunshots at the Batchler residence. Nobody knew what happened yet, so we, the police, were investigating. I was in charge of all field operations, so I, Officer Ashley Barns was called in with my team. My team was Officers Elizabeth Smith, Jake Sweed, lzzy Dan, and Robert Takie.

"Affirmative", answered Elizabeth. We moved in and discovered Jeb Batchler's dead body at the top of the basement stairs. He was holding a gun. As our coroner examined the body, we searched the rest of the house. There was a trail of blood leading down to the basement, where we discovered nothing. As we finished examining the house, Jake discovered a new door under the basement staircase. It had another set of stairs going down into darkness.

"Izzy, Robert, with me", I called, heading down, "The rest of you look for clues on the culprit of this".

As we came closer to the bottom, a horrid antiseptic smell reached our noses. We all gagged at the unexpected stench, but continued on, expecting the worst. When we reached the basement, I steeled myself for anything before turning on the lights. What confronted my eyes was quite possibly, the worst thing I have _ever _witnessed in all my days of being a cop.

Lining the wall were several metal tables, each covered in a strange assortment of medical equipment, most of which were broken or spilled. What scared me was the multiple sharp objects and strange chemical-filled needles. Some of the scalpels had blood on them. The thought of whose blood exactly made me sick to think about.

That wasn't even the worst part though. The worst part was the sight on the other wall. There were several dog cages, each of which had the smell of blood coming from them. I had Robert examine the medical equipment while Izzy and I looked at the cages. In the first cage, we encountered a small girl. She had long, dirty, tangled blonde hair that had obviously never been cut. The girl wore a faded, too small medical gown, covered in blood. She had multiple puncture wounds in her arms and neck, plus a bullet wound in her stomach. Izzy checked for a pulse and found one, very faint. We gently pulled her out of the crate.

"Get a doctor down here now!" I called to Robert. He raced up the stairs as we checked the others. There was a teenage boy with black hair who had been dead for weeks, and another teenage boy with blonde hair who was also dead, only recently. We went to check the next girl. She was african american with wild, puffy black hair. She was alive, so we pulled her out. There were two more cages, which we hurried to check. The first held a small decaying body. It was dead, no doubt about that. We couldn't even tell if the body had been a girl or a boy. The last cage held a teenage girl with brown hair.

She obviously had the most brutal wounds, but in non vital places, so she was alive. We pulled her out and looked at the survivors, not knowing where to start helping. They'd only had basic medical training, so I checked if the bullet had passed all the way through. It had, on all of them, even the teenager with at least four bullet holes.

Eventually, an ambulance got there. The three girls where taken to a hospital as the three boys and Jeb were taken to the morgue.

**_Epilogue:_**

_All three girls survived. They didn't take their friends deaths well, though. The oldest, Maximum Ride as she'd introduced herself as , had screamed at them from her hospital bed, somehow managing to sound intimidating before the youngest, Angel had calmed her down. _

_As it turns out, Jeb had been experimenting on them since he had found them five years ago. The reason? Because they had __**WINGS**__. There had been a place called the School, they had explained, that had turned them into bird freaks. Eventually, the Flock, as they called themselves had managed to defeat the School with a plan that they didn't talk about. But then, they had landed in Jeb's yard, freezing and starving. He had accepted them for a whole month before imprisoning them as they slept. He had drugged them. From that point on, he'd run horrible tests, on the boys the most, to see who was the strongest and things like that._

_About three months before the police found them, Jeb had gone completely mad and killed Gazzy, who had been the decaying body. Then, two weeks before, the same thing had happened, except with Fang, who had been the one with black hair. The day the officers had found them, Jeb had rushed in, yelling that they were worthless and more trouble than they were worth and shot Max four times. He'd then stabbed her twice, leaving awful scarring on her arms and torso. He'd then proceeded to shoot Iggy, Nudge, and Angel before leaving the basement and killing himself. That had been the shots the neighbors had heard. The downstairs room had been team that saved them had been thanked, mostly by Nudge, more times than they could count. _

_The girls now lived in a secure facility with other mutants that had survived the destruction of the School. Several of their systems had given out, but with new technology, most survived. All the mutants still had flashbacks, but none more than those three girls. The survivors who would maybe never trust anyone but each other. Then again, Angel __**could **__read minds…_


End file.
